


tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow

by halfmoonsevenstars



Category: Agent Carter (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Female Bucky Barnes, Female Steve Rogers, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, totally not at all compliant with Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:46:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfmoonsevenstars/pseuds/halfmoonsevenstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having had her entire history restored to her all at once in exchange for getting herself back is an enormous weight, especially as she isn’t so sure she even deserves to be alive. But having to live with what she’s done is a just punishment, as far as she is concerned, though if they want to go further, she won’t protest. Nothing can change what she has done, so she must atone for it in some small way—even if that way means to rot in a SHIELD cell for the rest of her life.</p><p>Four little words: “Remember who you are”—who’d have thought they could hold such power?</p><p>The first memory to take shape, she plucks out from the mass of blurred overlapping fragments during a session with the psychiatrist, one in which she’s asked explicitly about the nature of her relationship with Captain Stephanie Rogers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to my wonderful beta reader/hand-holder [schlicky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/schlicky/pseuds/schlicky). I couldn't have finished this without you!

She never asks what day it is.

It doesn’t matter.

The days flow into one another in swaths of grey and beige and white, the artificial fluorescent lights overhead keeping her natural rhythms thrown off track. There is no clock in her cell, and she could easily keep the time by counting her heartbeats, but there’s no point. They call it a room, but she knows it’s a cell, because it has no windows—nothing but a toilet, a sink, a cot, and an empty shelf. She’s lucky to even have a scratchy, thin blanket for her cot; it’s the kind they give to budget airline passengers, and they monitor her with a camera that they don’t bother to conceal, to make sure she doesn’t hang herself with it.

She’s too tired to even begin thinking about that—beyond the vague idea that it would probably be better for all concerned—let alone scrape up the energy to do it.

They bring her out twice a week to talk with a doctor, who only calls her Sergeant Barnes and never looks her in the eye. The room she sits in with the doctor (a psychiatrist, really) is also grey and beige and white, and it does not have windows. She talks anyway, sometimes. It is something to do, at least, even though she doubts very much that this doctor can do anything that the cube hadn’t already taken care of on her behalf.

Except for the facts that she wears clothes—shapeless baggy prison garb that they tell her are “scrubs”—and that she’s awake, it’s almost exactly like being in cryostasis. Her left arm is nearly useless thanks to the EMP cuff locked onto it, powered by a lithium battery that they change out (with great care, as if she is a wild animal, all teeth and claws and feral rage) before her first session of the week with the doctor. They may have let her keep it, but they’ve also disabled everything that made it special, that made it _hers_. The fingers just barely open and close, and she supposes that she should be grateful that at least she can move it, bend it at the elbow, hold it out at a right angle from herself to reach for objects. But mostly, it just hangs heavily at her side, pulling at her shoulder and back muscles when she stands. Regardless, she paces the cell’s tiny perimeter over and over when she can’t sleep, even though it makes her whole body ache and sag from the effort of it.

Otherwise, there is nothing. They leave her alone with her tangled skein of memories, sitting on her bed with her arm cradled in her lap like a precious thing, like something cherished and wanted and loved, staring at the cinderblock walls.

There are no visitors. She could have them, if she wanted them. They told her so almost right away, but she had declined immediately; she has no right to see anyone, not really. She hasn’t earned it yet. She might never earn it, though she doesn’t voice that last bit, lest they make her see the doctor three times a week instead of just two.

Having had her entire history restored to her all at once in exchange for getting herself back is an enormous weight, especially as she isn’t so sure she even deserves to be alive. But having to live with what she’s done is a just punishment, as far as she is concerned, though if they want to go further, she won’t protest. Nothing can change what she has done, so she must atone for it in some small way—even if that way means to rot in a SHIELD cell for the rest of her life.

Four little words: “Remember who you are”—who’d have thought they could hold such power?

The first memory to take shape, she plucks out from the mass of blurred overlapping fragments during a session with the psychiatrist, one in which she’s asked explicitly about the nature of her relationship with Captain Stephanie Rogers.

It’s not that she refuses to answer the question; it’s that her tongue goes numb and she _can’t_ answer.

The memory rises to meet her like the frozen ground after a very, very long fall.

——

“What if they find out, Steph?” Even in the midst of a pitched argument between them, Bucky kept her voice low, always mindful that the only things separating them from the world outside were the canvas walls of a tent. It was a large tent, because Steph was a larger person now, in more ways than one, but it was still just a tent. “We’ll get court-martialed or worse, rescue or no rescue.”

Steph tried not to look disappointed, but subtlety worked on her new frame about as well as it had on her old one (which was to say, not very well). “I thought—“ She bit off the rest of the sentence, worrying her bottom lip with her front teeth, an old habit that the nuns hadn’t managed to pinch out of her.

“You thought what? That we’d get special treatment?” Bucky asked. “I hate to tell you this, Steph, but this is still the U.S. government, and we’re still in the middle of a war. They’re gonna be looking at us harder than ever.”

Steph shook her head, her ponytail already starting to fall out of the string she’d just tied it up with not minutes before; her hair had since become an uncharacteristically sloppy mess. “I don’t know what I thought. Not much of anything, I guess.”

Bucky repressed the urge to sigh. “Sit down. You’re making me nervous, standing there _looming_ like that.”

“I don’t _loom_.” Steph sat down heavily on her cot anyway, and for a moment Bucky thought for sure it was going to collapse under her weight, but it held. It was fucking _weird_ , seeing tiny, pretty Steph whose head only just reached Bucky’s shoulder—just the right height for them to dance in the living room sometimes, if she wasn’t too sick and Bucky wasn’t too tired from work—before, looking like almost a blonde version of Wonder Woman now.

Although Bucky had to admit that Steph was dressed _far_ more sensibly than Wonder Woman. No star-spangled skirt and corset for her, just a reinforced canvas uniform with a utility belt and a thigh holster, battered combat boots on her feet (the laces were coming undone, just like always with Steph).  Despite its sensible design, the color scheme was atrocious, a ridiculous shade of blue, with a big white star right across Steph’s chest, with a white midriff and red straps that came down from her shoulders. Bucky had no idea what the hell _those_ were for, or what they even attached to.

Actually, they were probably for that ridiculous shield Steph was carrying when she burst into the lab where those rat bastards had been holding Bucky, shooting her up with god only knew what and slapping her around whenever they thought she was too slow giving answers. Not that she’d given them anything useful.  Bucky might have been the only OSS operative in history to manage to get her stupid ass captured while she was embedded with an _entire Army unit_ , but it didn’t mean she had to _continue_ the stupidity.

The shield was pretty well destroyed now, its smooth triangular surface dented and scratched and, in some places, outright breached completely by bullets. It sat in the corner of the tent like a girl who’d just gotten dumped for someone prettier at the CYO dance. But it’d done its job, Bucky guessed. Maybe Steph could get another one—preferably something that actually _stopped_ projectiles. What was the point of letting the government do weird shit to you with serums and rays (Steph had explained it all to her on the three-day march back from the HYDRA base, because Christ knew they’d had plenty of time to talk) if they were just going to let you get shot later?

Stark could probably do it. Bucky hadn’t much liked what she’d seen of the man, but she couldn’t deny that he had some good ideas. Of course, she only knew about them because he hadn’t shut the fuck up about said ideas the whole time they were supposed to be in a debriefing, like Bucky gave a shit about whatever Columbia University was doing in Manhattan. A dose of him at the Expo from several dozen yards away had been enough, frankly.

Bucky crossed the space between them to kneel down on the cot next to Steph and start finger-combing her hair to get it back in order for a proper ponytail that wouldn’t fall down right away. Well, at least that hadn’t changed; Steph’s hair was still as silken and golden as ever, albeit a little knotted at the moment. “You should think about cutting this, Stephie.”

“What?” Steph turned, looking at Bucky aghast, and Bucky had to drop her hands fast so she wouldn’t pull out any hair from Steph’s head. Super-soldier or not, it would probably still make her yelp. “No, Buck, that’s my _hair_. I can’t cut it.”

“It’s a liability,” Bucky explained. “That HYDRA thug could’ve easily put a couple of holes in you if you hadn’t gotten free of him so quick. Your ponytail’s like a convenient handle for the enemy, if they get your mask off again.”

“Then I’ll put it in a bun,” Steph answered, her stubborn nature shining through that perfect Amazonian façade, and Bucky suppressed a smile. “Besides, _you_ grew _your_ hair.”

“I had to. OSS regs,” she said, shaking it out of her face. “Blend in with other women. Can’t do that when you look like a dyke.”

Steph winced. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”

“Why not?  It’s what I am.” She paused. “It’s what _you_ are, too, y’know. Which brings me back to my original point, which is that we can’t be suspected of _anything_ even remotely weird. The Army ain’t too stringent about it anymore, but that Dulles pervert in charge at the OSS _is_. I already fucked up once, Steph. If I fuck up again, I’m out. And you’re out too, despite whatever fancy jump training they’ve given you.” Bucky tugged gently at a loose edge of the wings on Steph’s collar.

Steph slumped, almost imperceptibly, but Bucky noticed; they’d known each other too long for her not to. “I guess,” she conceded. “It doesn’t bother me, being queer. I just wish we didn’t have to…you know. Hide it.”

Bucky shrugged, but continued working all the tangles out of Steph’s hair, and she did tie it up properly anyway. “Nothing different from what we’re used to doing back home.”

“Yeah.” Steph was quiet for a moment, staring down at her hands—bigger now, but the nailbeds were still smudged with ink just like they’d always been—before she spoke again. “They want me to put together a team.”

“Yeah?” If Steph was telling her about it, it meant she wanted Bucky there.

“A sort of—special operations team. Small. For gathering intel, helping the resistance, running raids on HYDRA bases, like the one—like Monday was. I get to pick everyone I want.”

“Who are you thinking about?” Bucky couldn’t come up with any girls off the top of her head at the moment who would fit Steph’s needs. Most of the ones she knew were either used for clerical work or had already embarked on incredibly dangerous missions of their own.

“I’ve been looking at some files on the guys we brought back,” Steph said, shifting uncomfortably. “You’re my first pick. If you want to work with the SSR, that is.”

“Steph, I’d do anything you asked, you know that,” Bucky said, although she was starting to get a little nervous. _Guys?_ Posing as a war correspondent with the 107th had been one thing, but actually working with men—that was another. “Who else?”

“Dugan. Morita. Jones. Falsworth. Dernier.” Steph listed them like she was ticking off boxes on a form, which meant that she’d made up her mind already.

“And two broads,” Bucky said, trying not to sound bitter and failing. “That’ll work out _great_.”

“It will if they’re willing to take orders from me. I think they will.” Steph was quiet again for a moment. “I’ve been talking with Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter. We think it’s best if—“

“If?”

“If you and I pretend to be guys too. I’ve been told nobody really suspects that I’m not a man anyway, because I got my mask on again so fast, and I’m so tall, but I think we should keep it up. It’ll make things easier.”

“Steph, how the _fuck_ are we gonna hide that from five guys we’re gonna be with 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? It’s impossible.”

“No, I mean. They’ll know. And of course, Howard knows, and Agent Carter, and the colonel. But nobody else has to. Agent Carter is already on the lookout for a guy who looks enough like me that he can be the public face of Captain America—do all the shit I don’t wanna do, like stupid USO tours to sell war bonds, kiss babies, that kind of thing. They tried to rope me into that initially. I told them it wasn’t happening; I want to do things that _really_ matter. But I kept the shield. Thought it was a cute souvenir.”

“So, what, we do all the dirty work and some actor gets all the credit?” Bucky asked, her eyes narrowing.

“No, _we_ still get the credit, Buck, it’s just their faces everyone’ll know instead of ours. It means we’ll get to do all the stealth work you were trained for. It’s the perfect cover,” Steph said, and she turned to Bucky with a plea in her cornflower-blue eyes, an expression that Bucky had never been able to say no to.

She wasn’t saying no, but… “Say your plan works and nobody ever figures you for a dame. What about me?”

“What about you?”

Bucky rolled her eyes. “You _goon_. The entire 107 th knows I’m a woman. They were stuck with me long enough to notice, that’s for sure. How are we gonna get two hundred men to keep their mouths shut about Captain America’s new partner?”

Steph grinned. “That’s the other part that Col. Phillips is helping me with. He’s gonna make you disappear, Bucky. As far as the U.S. Army and the OSS are concerned, you’ve been reassigned to the Washington bureau as support staff for the propaganda division. Agent Carter’s getting new orders drawn up for you as _James_ Buchanan Barnes.”

“James? I hate that name. That’s a stupid name.” She’d broken the nose of a boy named James once, at the orphanage, when she’d caught him picking on a little kid while the nuns weren’t looking.

“Like anyone’s actually gonna call you that. Come _on,_ Buck, what do you say?”

Bucky sighed. Things could be a lot worse than getting offered a job working undercover in Europe for the real Captain America. There was a good chance that if she stayed in the OSS, she would wind up being put on a security detail for the fake one anyway. And besides, it was _Steph_ asking. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay. God damn it—I’ll do it. I’m not happy about it, but I’ll do it. _If_ you really think this is gonna work.”

“It’s gonna work,” Steph answered. “I need you, Bucky. I wouldn’t ask you to help me if I thought it wasn’t gonna work. None of the other guys is as good a sniper as you.”

“All right already, enough. I’m sold. And you’ll help me cut this mess, won’t you?” Bucky asked, pointing at her disheveled bob, already glad that she could get rid of it; she was sick of the wind blowing hair into her mouth. “We should do yours, too, I guess. I’ll find some scissors.” Bucky got up from her seat on the cot, positive that she’d find them somewhere around camp to swipe for an hour or so, and nobody would ever be the wiser that she’d taken them.

“Hey, Steph?” she asked, turning around just before she reached the tent flap.

“Hm?” Steph was already engrossed in her pile of after-action reports, as Bucky suspected she might do, despite explicit orders from Phillips to leave the rest of the paperwork until tomorrow.

“I like the shield. You should make it a thing. Maybe get yourself a more durable one, though,” she said.

“I’ll take it under advisement, Sergeant.” Steph looked up at Bucky with that little half-smile of hers that always meant yes.

“’Sergeant’? Are you demoting me? I thought I at least ranked second lieutenant after all the comportment and etiquette classes they made me take so I’d get mistaken for a lady,” she teased.

“Your new orders say sergeant, but I’ll bust your ass down to private if you don’t come back with those scissors before I change my mind,” Steph said, jabbing her pencil in Bucky’s general direction.

“Yes, _ma’am._ ” Bucky tossed off a sharp, snappy salute to Steph before she exited, and wasn’t surprised to see the pencil whizzing past her left arm and landing point-first into the mud right in front of her. “We’re gonna have to work on your aim, Cap,” she called over her shoulder.

“Get _outta_ here, Buck!”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

——

Bucky doesn’t speak again until the next time they escort her to the doctor’s office—only she comes to realize quickly (although it still takes her too long, stupid her) that it’s not his office. This room is mostly grey, with exposed pipes painted to match, like the inside of a battleship. It does have a window, though, and Bucky fixates on the clear blue sky she can see through it before finally noticing that there’s another person in the room with her.

“Natalia,” Bucky says, and her voice sounds as leaden and lifeless as her left arm, even to her own ears. She hasn’t seen Natalia since turning herself in; Bucky had refused to allow anyone else to touch her, and so it had been Natalia’s hands that fastened the cuffs around her wrists and locked the chains around her ankles.  It has to have been a month or more since that night, when Bucky had surrendered to SHIELD, slumped on her knees and staring at the ground so she didn’t have to witness one more second of Steph’s face twisted with hurt.

“Jane.” Natalia smiles a little.

She wants to tell Natalia not to call her that, only nuns and elderly next-door neighbors and people who wanted to get on her nerves have ever called her that, and it sounds _wrong_ coming from her anyway. But instead she asks, “What are you doing here?”

“I came to check on you.” Natalia doesn’t drop her smile, and although it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, Bucky thinks it just might be genuine.

Bucky leans against the wall, arms folded across her stomach to conceal the fact that she’s actually holding her left elbow to take some of the weight off her shoulder. “Well, now you have. You should probably go. They’re expecting a report, no doubt.”

Natalia shrugs. “Yes, they are. But they’ll also expect me to spend more than two minutes on it. You should sit.”

“I’ll sit if you do,” Bucky says.

“All right.” Natalia drops gracefully into one of the office chairs, crossing her legs at the ankles.

“What’s the point of this report, exactly? Aren’t you people watching the camera in my room? Reading all the transcripts from my appointments with the head shrinker?” Bucky asks, taking the other one. She’s not graceful about it at all, flopping down artlessly in hopes that Natalia won’t notice that she _needs_ to sit, to give her arm something to rest on instead of hanging there pulling on the muscles left in her shoulder.

“Maybe I wanted to see you,” Natalia replies.

Her mouth twists; it’s not a smile, but it could be one if she remembered how. “Nostalgia doesn’t suit you, Black Widow.”

“Who said it was anything to do with nostalgia?”

“Then it’s because they think you can get me to talk,” Bucky says, “because their doctor isn’t doing an efficient enough job of it. And you are, if nothing else, efficient.”

“Couldn’t it be both?” Natalia wants to know.

“You can’t possibly care that much. What we—“ Bucky cuts herself off, because _stupid,_ they’re listening to every word; every goddamn wall in this place has to be bugged. “It was nothing, really.”

Natalia tilts her head. “You always were a bad liar, Jane.”

——

“No’m not,” the Soldier muttered, rolling over onto her side to look at the wall instead. It wasn’t a particularly nice wall, with the plaster starting to crack and the wallpaper border stained with water damage. But it was easier than looking at Natalia for the moment.

 “I can tell you’re worried,” Natalia said, curling her long dancer’s limbs around the Soldier from behind, pressing close and burying her nose in the nape of the Soldier’s neck, where her hair had been shorn close to the skin. “But we’ve been careful. And we know all the ways of getting around everyone who would matter.”

“And we _learned_ those ways from everyone who would matter,” she replied.

She felt, rather than saw, Natalia’s shrug. “Then we’re already in trouble, so what’s the difference?”

“That kind of attitude is going to get you killed someday if you keep it up,” the Soldier answered, breaking the embrace to sit up and look at Natalia directly, almost regretting it; Natalia was just so _young_ , always seeming to be even more so when she was in a reckless, romantic mood. “Always have a contingency plan. Never assume anything is over just because it looks that way.”

Natalia smiled, stretching out like a housecat enjoying a sunbeam, even though it couldn’t have been comfortable with the both of them occupying the same narrow rented bed. They hadn’t felt like pushing the two that came in the room together, opting instead to practically tear each other’s clothes off as soon as they’d gotten in from the airport. “So what’s your contingency plan, then? If we’re found out?”

It really was more of a “when” rather than an “if,” but the Soldier kept herself from voicing it. “I’ll take all the blame. Tell them I corrupted you, that it was all my fault,” she said quietly. “Let them punish me as they see fit.”

Natalia’s smile promptly disappeared. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do I _look_ like I’m joking?”

 “Do you really think I’d let you do that?”

“You’ll try not to. And you’ll almost succeed. But even if they were to take anything you say into consideration, it’s still on me, because I am your superior. Which, really, it should be.”

“ _That’s_ your idea of a contingency plan?”

“It’s the best option I’ve got. I can’t shield us both, but I can at least get you out of the direct line of fire,” the Soldier told her, and she reached over, twirling the fingers of her right hand in Natalia’s hair for a moment. It always surprised her when she touched it, because it looked like it should burn, but it didn’t; Natalia’s hair was soft and silken and always flowed through her hands like water.

“What will they do to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you really not know, or are you just not telling me?”

She paused for a moment, because it seemed to the Soldier that there _had_ been something, and it was nagging at the edges of her memory like oilcloth tacked haphazardly over a broken window, flapping in the wind. “I really don’t know,” she said finally, when it wouldn’t come to her.

The answer seemed to—well, not satisfy her, exactly, but Natalia evidently deemed her words as the truth, because she didn’t ask again. Instead, she sat up, stretched out, and leaned over to kiss the Soldier quite thoroughly before hopping out of bed. “I want some tea. Do you want some?” 

——

“No,” she says aloud.

“That’s funny. I don’t think you’ve actually gotten any better at it since we last saw each other, but perhaps I’m not exactly an objective party,” Natalia says, a smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

Bucky doesn’t smile back. “I’d like to go back to my cell now.”

She pretends not to notice the hurt expression that crosses Natalia’s face for the briefest of moments, because noticing would weaken her resolve. Bucky turns to face the guard lurking outside the door, signaling her intent with a nod. She doesn’t look back over her shoulder as they begin to walk down the maze of corridors, doesn’t do anything but keep her eyes locked forward until she’s barricaded back into her cell, where she drops onto the cot like a sack of potatoes, ignoring the way the slats dig into her spine through the thin mattress.

Later, she wakes up tangled in her scratchy little blanket, breathing hard and drenched in sour sweat, with curses and pleas in half a dozen languages dying in her throat as her eyes adjust to the metallic fluorescent light, and she wishes she could take it back, that she hadn’t dismissed Natalia so quickly. Even if the olive branch _had_ been purely mercenary on Natalia’s part, now there’s nothing to hold onto in this sea of neutral colors and static lighting and daily routines that yet still somehow manage to feel shapeless; there are only more old memories rising to the surface with nothing new to crowd them out. They come unbidden, at random, and she can’t control them.

The sweat dries quickly, because her cell is almost a desert thanks to the filtered, recycled air that gets pumped into it through the ventilation system, and she’s soon shivering, reaching for the blanket that she’d thrown onto the floor not minutes earlier. She wraps it around her shoulders and huddles into herself, feeling vaguely ridiculous because it’s not even cold in here, not really—she’s been cold before. She knows what it’s like to be _really_ cold.

——

“I can’t believe we’re spending the night in a _barn_ ,” Bucky grumbled, tucking herself deeper into her coat, a battered, padded navy wool thing Steph had acquired from supply at base camp for her. It smelled like mold, but it mostly fit, hiding the shape of her body in its bulk and was therefore better than nothing. Bucky had cannibalized Steph’s cowl to sew one of its wings on her left arm, because she didn’t have any name badges or patches to put on the coat, and besides, the wings just looked dumb. Her cowl was better without them—not as much of a target, now, especially with Steph having finally conceded to wearing an actual helmet as well. And it had made Steph grin when she saw it, which was worth the whole pain-in-the-ass job.

“Better than the open air,” Morita pointed out, “unless you like the idea of the Luftwaffe using us for night-bombing target practice.” 

Bucky snorted a little. “Jim, this barn _is_ open-air.”

“Fair point,” he said, glancing up at the giant hole in the roof.

They’d had to clear out a lot of debris and shell fragments from the barn before setting up camp for the night. The little farmhouse a hundred yards away had been the original plan, until they’d gotten up close and seen the structural damage from stray bombs that had been meant for the town occupied by resistance fighters a few kilometers away. The town itself…well, Bucky preferred not to think about that. It was the only way she would keep from losing it just then, something she absolutely could not afford to do in front of these men. They’d only been traveling together a couple of weeks, mostly on foot, which made them all irritable and sore (except for Steph, whose energy and enthusiasm seemed limitless), and the last thing Bucky needed was for them to think of her as some dumb broad who went hysterical on them right away.

“What’s all this about?” Gabe asked as he flopped down onto a pile of old, but clean, hay. “I thought you’d be excited to finally get to see the night sky in its natural state, city girl.”

She made a deliberately terrible face at him. “I’m no city girl. I’m from Indiana.”

“You lived there until you were two and then your dad got transferred to Fort Hamilton,” Steph countered, taking a seat on the ground next to Bucky, who turned her terrible face on Steph. Steph merely laughed and swatted at her. Not hard, and mostly she missed because she wasn’t looking while she did it.

“Still counts.”

“Does not.”

“Does too!”

They would have gone on for a while longer like that if Monty and Dernier hadn’t gotten back with extra firewood, plus some bread and wine. Bucky had no idea how they’d come up with that, but she found that she didn’t care, even if the bread was stale. It toasted well, at least, and it was good with the cans of franks and beans that they’d ratfucked off a left-behind supply truck near Bourg-Saint-Maurice a few days ago. They’d done well to find it, actually, because they’d been running low on basically everything by the time they came across the cache. Turned out, supplies didn’t last nearly as long as Bucky thought they would—but it was winter, and she supposed they were using up most of their energy not freezing to death as they moved throughout the countryside. No wonder they needed more food than they’d planned for, and Steph, well, she could just about eat a whole side of beef by herself and still have room for dessert.

Bucky reached inside her coat for a pack of Camels, something she had _also_ liberated from the supply truck, and passed it around. At least she could smoke around Steph now, because it wouldn’t send her into a coughing spasm anymore, although Steph still didn’t approve and told Bucky just about every time she saw her going for the cigarettes that they’d give her lung cancer someday if she kept that shit up. Steph didn’t give that lecture around the other guys, however, which was why Bucky had acquired the habit over the last couple of days of waiting to smoke with everyone else, rather than sticking with her usual practice of just lighting up whenever she wanted. Not to mention, it definitely helped her ration them a whole lot better.

She leaned in, cupping her hand around the flame from Morita’s lighter when Dugan reached out and snapped it shut.

“Hey!” Bucky squawked at him, although she wasn’t really angry, just confused.

“It just occurred to me that if we’re gonna go around keeping up the front that you and Cap here are both men, we should probably get you in the habit of _acting_ like men,” Dugan said, adjusting his bowler so that it sat a little more firmly on his head.

“What’s that got to do with my smoke?”

“Well, you were letting Jim here light it _for_ you.”

It took her a second, but she nodded in understanding and reached out for the Zippo, which Bucky flipped open and struck to life in one fluid motion, inhaling deeply as she touched the flame to the tip of her Camel.

“See? It ain’t that hard,” Dugan said jovially, taking it from her to light his own cigar, then handed it over to Gabe. “You already know what you’re doing. Just make sure you do it every time, whether other people are around to see or not. It has to become second nature to you.”

Steph snorted, reaching over and grabbing her rucksack from the corner to put behind her back as she stretched out in front of the fire with tomorrow’s map. “Is this your incredibly subtle way of trying to tell us that we should act more masculine, gentlemen?”

“Well, yeah,” Gabe said, totally unashamed. Bucky liked him all the more for his honesty. “You’ve got it mostly down, but you need to practice. And Bucky, you’re holding that thing all wrong.”

“You’ve _got_ to be kidding me.” Bucky looked down at the cigarette between her fingers.

“What Private Jones here means to say is that it’s not the actual holding of the cigarette that’s the problem,” Monty volunteered. “It’s the way you sit, as if you’re still wearing a dress.”

“Sprawl your legs out some,” said Morita.

“Oh, right. I’d forgotten all about how men act like they need two spaces on the subway. One for them, one for their gonads,” Bucky answered, taking a drag from her cigarette. But she did rearrange herself, letting her elbows poke out more, her knees spread as far apart as she could get without wrenching her hips out of joint.

“That’s the spirit,” Monty said in that cheerful way Bucky already knew meant he was just being English and deliberately misunderstanding her.

“What next, should we learn to spit?” she wanted to know. “I think I’ve got the scratching myself part down after watching you howler monkeys for the last few weeks.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking, and I think we could really use a team name,” Steph broke in. Bucky had to hide a smile; Steph was just so transparent about wanting to change the subject.

“Haven’t you come up with any, Captain?” Morita asked.

Steph shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Howler Monkeys _would_ be appropriate,” Bucky said. “We’re all gonna end up with lice no matter what we do.”

Even though her eyes never left the map, Steph’s hand automatically went to her head as if to feel through her hair for nits—she’d always been terrified of it ever since she’d seen Sister Mary Cletus using the lice comb on another girl in their dormitory—but she changed course halfway through to smack Bucky in the arm. “Stop making me think about that.”

“We’re more like gorillas than monkeys, anyway.  Howler gorillas. And hey, we’re guerrillas, too,” Dugan said, pronouncing “guerrilla” in a mangled French accent that caused Gabe and Dernier to wince simultaneously, and laughed at his own joke. “No, that’s perfect; can we be the Howler Guerrillas?”

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that puns are the lowest form of humor, Dugan?” Monty wanted to know, looking actively pained by it.

“I dunno. I didn’t pass English in high school. Sorry, Lord Autumnbottom.”

Monty at least managed to refrain from sighing. “We’re really less guerrilla fighters and more like commandos, regardless.”

“True,” Gabe chimed in. “I mean, we’re sanctioned by the U.S. Army, the British Armed Forces, _and_ the SSR.”

“And the Maquis, unofficially, of course,” said Dernier from the corner he’d parked himself in.

The map went still as Steph’s blue eyes reappeared over the top of the page. “What do you guys think of ‘Howling Commandos’?”

——

At least _that_ memory is a pleasant one, she thinks, and it’s a relatively complete one. Instead of it becoming easier as time passes, it’s getting harder and harder to separate the matted tangle of details. Memories involving the most pain come in huge variegated skeins, dyed every few inches with a different color of misery, and the better ones are far less frequent but much more whole. She doesn’t mind the wait; it’s nice to be reminded that not everything in her life has been filled with death and suffering, even if she doesn’t deserve to have good thoughts.

But even the worst things that come to mind, once she figures out what they are, can be useful in helping piece herself back together. Some of them, she even begins to talk about with the doctor—who always does her best not to look horrified and always fails, which is ridiculous; as a SHIELD employee she must surely have dealt with much worse before than just a worthless, broken wind-up doll like Bucky. The picture is still far from being complete, given her difficulty in untangling her memories and putting them into context. But despite the doctor and her squeamishness, she’s actually started to become more helpful to that end.

For instance, at the doctor’s insistence, she begins to keep a journal on the days that they don’t meet. It’s mostly filled with scratch-outs and doodles instead of real, cohesive entries, but it’s something to do with her time. And it _is_ easier to write out her thoughts than to voice them, she’s found. She’d been skeptical about that, but the doctor had insisted that she at least try. She would never admit it, not out loud, but it’s also a good way to keep track of her memories. After a few weeks, she’s even able to flip back through the entries and start making sense of them, untangling the threads to weave a more cohesive narrative.

Bucky doesn’t know why she’s so shocked when she finally realizes exactly how she became the Winter Soldier. One afternoon she’s finishing a journal entry, absentmindedly taking bites of her sandwich every so often as she writes and crosses things out and re-writes, when she drops the pen, startled. It falls onto the floor and rolls under the bed, but she doesn’t get up to retrieve it right away. She does take care to put the sandwich down on the tray again; it might be somewhat soggy and taste like crap, but it’s all she’ll get until dinner.

It’s not that she hadn’t _known_ —she was meant to be useful to her country and so they had made her useful—but she’s never had this much time to _think_ about it before. Her first memories as property of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are of snippets of conversation caught before she had completely woken up. It had taken her some time to even realize that the rush of sound was merely a few voices, let alone to begin processing what she was hearing—and she couldn’t move anyway, couldn’t even open her eyes, not right away. Even now, having replayed it in her mind over and over, backwards and forwards, she knows she’s still missing pieces because she’d faded in and out so much at first.

What she mostly recalls, aside from the wrenching pain in her left shoulder, is that at first they had thought that she was dead—and she _had_ been, just not for good, apparently—and were surprised that their experiment in reviving her had worked, because they hadn’t really been counting on it. She’d made a good test subject, expendable not only due to her gender but because she was also physically damaged, and a worthless American to boot. They had been confused by where they’d found her, as Soviet intelligence hadn’t placed any U.S. Army activity near that part of the Alps. Someone there evidently had a flash of inspiration, because they decided to start looking through their files on American operatives. Of course, this only served to cause further confusion, because Jane Barnes was supposed to be in Washington, DC as of November 1943.

None of that information had wound up mattering, not after she’d opened her eyes, sat up, and proceeded to level half the room. Bucky regrets having killed those scientists now; they were just people who were doing a job and hadn’t been actively trying to cause her harm. But they’d been in the way and she hadn’t been thinking straight—hadn’t been thinking at all, really—and she’d managed to slaughter four people in less than a minute with one working arm.

But instead of putting her down like a rabid dog, they’d simply jabbed her with a needle when she wasn’t looking. When she woke up, she found herself in possession of a brand new left arm (with a permanent mark of their ownership in the red star stamped on the shoulder) and the code name Black Widow.

Not _a_ Black Widow, although it eventually became a rank unto itself, but _the_ Black Widow.

On the mission that undid her, she did not wear a tight black jumpsuit like Natalia, but rather a dress they’d given her specifically for the occasion. She had curled her shaggy hair the best that she could and put on crimson lipstick to match the dress, which hugged her curves more than she would have liked (it restricted her movements too much), didn’t have any useful pockets, and sported a ridiculous crepe ruffle around the collar. But it had three-quarter sleeves, which worked well with a pair of evening gloves—no hints of gleaming metal where they didn’t belong.

Her handlers had ensured that she would be on the guest list at the American embassy in Moscow, and she was more relieved than she felt comfortable allowing herself to be when the guards didn’t even ask for her papers. The dress was—it made her think of something, but she couldn’t have said what, only that it reminded her of the sound of airplanes droning overhead and cigarette smoke and beer just pulled fresh from the tap and someone who she wished had just stayed away instead.

The man she was meeting there worked for a relatively new organization called SHIELD, but evidently he was unhappy with how subservient he had become in being forced to work for a woman, and the KGB was paying quite well for information about any new secret Anglo-American collaborations.

She introduced herself as Margaret, a name that surprised her, because it wasn’t the one she was supposed to be using. And just a few minutes into their meeting in a shadowy corner of the gardens, she wrapped a garrote around his throat. It had been hidden inside a faux-pearl bracelet on her right wrist, just as a precaution, although her orders were to exchange the slip of paper with the Swiss bank account number (tucked into a secret compartment in her small beaded clutch purse) for the file—not to kill him. But Flynn wouldn’t just take the money he’d been offered; he wanted more. He _demanded_ it, like it was his right, as if he were _owed_ more. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to get this information, he said, and it was only fair.

Then he’d made the mistake of reaching for her bag in a sudden movement. She reacted before the thought “stop” could even enter her mind, and then it was too late. So she left him there, crumpled on the flagstone walkway, with nothing more than a thin bloody line etched into his throat. She had to forcibly remind herself to take both the purse and the briefcase containing the file with her—she very nearly left without it in her haste to distance herself from the scene. It was all over and done with so quickly that she almost couldn’t believe it had really happened.  

But, of course, it had.

Even though the Americans insisted on a full investigation, she escaped their notice. Nobody had seen either of them leave the reception separately, a few minutes apart. Nobody had seen her duck through the hedgerows and slip out the rear entrance, and she had gone back to the training facility on foot, keeping to the alleyways and streets where the sodium lights weren’t kept up very well. And eventually, the Americans dropped it, their fickle attentions caught by some other sparkling distraction, as was their wont.

General Karpov, however, did _not_ drop it, and her punishment was not insignificant. This, despite the fact that she had both retrieved the file—not a SHIELD file, but SSR, embossed with an eagle, and she had not so much as peeked inside it— _and_ she’d saved almost a quarter million rubles that the Soviet Union was no longer beholden to pay Flynn.

It makes sense, now that Bucky has put it together after teasing the threads apart (mostly picked from half-understood conversations while she’d been under heavy sedation), why they had been particularly harsh and relatively public in disciplining her. The information she’d been tasked with retrieving that night had been a copy of her own SSR file, the one that they’d kept starting from the day she agreed to follow Steph as James Buchanan Barnes, Howling Commando. General Karpov had dealt with her himself, and when he was done he had her dragged away, drugged up, and hastily dumped into a cryostasis chamber while they figured out what to do with her next.  She thinks that she recalls talk of some kind of a cross-check to see if there was a match, that the general had come by once and congratulated the scientists on making such a find (he’d been in a much better mood by then).

She’d proved disastrous at being the Black Widow, and when they woke her up again, it was a different year altogether. They now called her the Winter Soldier, and her new missions no longer involved red dresses with lipstick to match; she wore practical gear instead, and when she wasn’t being sent all over the world to make a lot of accidents happen to a lot of people who just happened to be enemies of the state, they considered her adequately skilled enough to train a whole class of girls who aspired to attain the rank of Black Widow. And, now that Bucky thinks about it, they probably assumed at the time that she was safe; as far as they knew, they’d successfully programmed any desire for sex out of her completely so as not to interfere with any of her assignments, and besides—she was a woman, not a man who could not be trusted to avoid temptation.

They were fools to think that, of course.

And despite having tried her best to protect Natalia from their wrath, she could not; they were even more cruel to Natalia than she had imagined, penalizing her instead, and badly. All they had done to Bucky was put her back in cryostasis. But Natalia—they’d not only beaten her severely, but they also made her watch the procedure, and the next time they’d needed the Winter Soldier for a mission, they had made her watch that process too, even though by then it had been nearly five years and Natalia was back in the department’s good graces again; she had been for quite a while, but evidently they’d thought she could use the reminder.

By then, they’d all agreed that the Winter Soldier was better for short-term stints; based on their analysis, her conditioning only started breaking down if she was out for too long. This time she was to travel to Texas for a Democratic fundraiser parade, because they could no longer trust their original choice (an ex-Marine who had tried to defect to the USSR and been quietly rejected due to his rapidly burgeoning mental instability), and she was the far superior sniper anyway. She would get the job done quietly, but as it turned out, he was useful in another way entirely, though it wasn’t to his benefit at all.

Natalia was not asked to go with her, as this would be a solo assignment—was treated like she wasn’t even in the room, though she had dared to smile nervously at her when nobody else was looking. Bucky remembers now, although it had no impact on her then, the way Natalia’s face had crumpled for a split second after realizing that the Soldier no longer remembered her. The Winter Soldier had stared through her as if she were nothing, just a piece of furniture.

Come to think of it, that’s the last memory she thinks she’s got of Natalia, before encountering her again in Philadelphia—two months ago, now? Three, maybe? But it doesn’t matter. Natalia hasn’t tried to see her since that first time. Bucky wishes that she would.

One afternoon, she slides her half-eaten meal tray (they’re always sent back half-eaten; she’s got no appetite anymore, and even if she did, the food tastes worse than C-rations a lot of the time) through the slot in her cell door and is astonished when a carefully-folded note drops onto the floor in front of her a moment afterward.

It’s in Steph’s messy artist’s scrawl: _Can I come see you tomorrow?_

Bucky sends it back through the slot in ragged, uneven pieces.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to see Steph—the more time she spends in solitary confinement, the more time she has alone with her thoughts, the more Bucky finds herself wanting it. But she can’t face Steph right now. She might not _ever_ be able to face Steph again, not after all the things that she’s done, and Bucky doesn’t deserve to anyway.  How can Bucky look Steph in the eye when she’s responsible for the deaths of so many people? She’s killed other operatives like herself, ambassadors, diplomats, senators, MPs, prime ministers, minor royalty, even presidents. It’s the opposite of everything that Captain America stands for, and Bucky suspects Steph might want to see her just so she can confirm that in person. She curls up on her cot, facing away from the door so she doesn’t have to look at the slot anymore.

——

“Sorry we couldn’t do this on your real birthday,” Bucky told Steph, one sticky July afternoon at Coney Island the summer before the United States entered the war; Steph had just turned 23 earlier in the week, but she’d spent the day babysitting for the neighbors across the hall while they went to the parade, because Bucky had been called into work unexpectedly. Steph had urged her to take the shift, because it meant time and a half, and it never hurt to have extra money ready in case something came up.

Steph punched her in the arm, grinning. “Shut up, we didn’t have to do this at _all_ , and you know it.”

“Sure we did,” she said. “Otherwise, what the hell have I been saving up for? And you needed some time off too. You’re gonna wind up with a hunchback if you don’t give yourself a break once in a while.”

Steph, who had thrown herself into her Federal Art Project contract over the last few months, didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. “I _like_ my job, Buck. It’s good to know that all those semesters of art school you paid for didn’t _entirely_ go to waste,” she answered, swinging Bucky’s hand as they walked.

Bucky loved when Steph did that; if they kept it playful and distant enough, nobody noticed anything in this kind of a crowd, and they could be as affectionate as they liked, short of actually kissing in public. Bucky used her free hand to push her hair back out of her eyes as she said, “I wouldn’t think I’d wasted my money even if you didn’t have any job at all.”

Steph went pink and muttered something inaudible—knowing her, it was probably something like “Oh come on, you sap,” because Steph was horrible at taking a compliment—and Bucky couldn’t help but grin and tweak her ponytail. Steph had beautiful hair, the kind of blonde that shone like spun gold in late-afternoon sunlight, never going brassy.

“You wanna go on the Cyclone with me?” Bucky asked, gesturing up at the roller coaster, partly to change the subject and partly because it was always fun to tease Steph with it.

Steph didn’t take the bait. “What I want is to have a hot dog and a lemonade at Nathan’s, and then maybe we can play some games or something.”

“How about the Tunnel of Love?” Bucky grinned.

Steph rolled her eyes.  “We did that already. It was corny.”

“The fun house?”

“You and the damn fun house. How many times can you look at yourself in a bunch of weird mirrors?”

“The Whip?”

“Bucky, if I’m not gonna get on the Cyclone, I’m sure as hell not getting on the damn Whip.”

“How about the sideshow?”

“We’ll go on the Wonder Wheel when it gets dark,” Steph decided instead, to shut Bucky up.

Bucky didn’t actually care _what_ they did, so long as Steph had a good time; she just enjoyed pestering Steph—it’d become tradition to try and annoy her at Coney Island, mostly because Bucky had never once succeeded. It was a rare enough treat for the two of them to have the same day off and enough money to really enjoy themselves that they never had a bad time there, even if the weather was lousy or the lines were long. They did, in fact, go and have their Nathan’s hot dogs—Bucky splurged on cotton candy for them, which Steph mostly ate because she was the one with the sweet tooth—and played a few games at the end of the boardwalk, ending up with a kewpie doll for a prize when Bucky hit all the targets at the shooting gallery, which they wound up giving to a little girl in passing anyway, because what were they gonna do with a doll? Besides, those things were creepy anyway; they both agreed on that.

To their delight, when they made it over to the Wonder Wheel, the sun had only just set and people were still finishing up in other areas of the park, so they had a car all to themselves, even though it could seat six. Bucky never thought that New York looked so beautiful as it did from the apex of the wheel, laid out in front of them in spires that glittered in the salt-stained evening, a thought that embarrassed her a little with its grandiosity. But it was true, even if she planned on keeping the notion to herself, and she was just leaning forward to get a better view when Steph surprised her with a kiss, pressing close to Bucky despite the heat and humidity of the early evening. They had to force themselves apart when the wheel started its descent, albeit reluctantly.

“You’ve got my lipstick all over your collar,” Bucky said, as Steph licked her ink-stained thumb and used it to wipe smudges from the outside corners of Bucky’s mouth.

“It’ll come out. I’ll try some rubbing alcohol later,” Steph answered, not looking concerned at all about it, even though she’d just finished altering her dress a few days ago (it was always cheaper to go second- or even third-hand and just take in her clothes, because so little came in her size that wasn’t more suitable for a schoolgirl), and this was the first time she’d had a chance to wear it. And Bucky was wearing bright red lipstick, too, nothing fancy—it was cheap stuff, really, which meant it’d probably be all the harder to wash out.

Their car finally made it to the ground. “What do you want to do next? I mean, your birthday celebration’s not over until you say so.” It was still early; they could stay a lot longer if they wanted, maybe get a snow cone or go sit on the still-warm sand and watch the waves come crashing in.

Steph grinned. “I wanna go home and fuck,” she whispered into Bucky’s ear and grabbed her hand, practically pulling her out of her seat and half-dragging Bucky in the direction of the subway. It was fortunate that Steph had a good grip on her, because Bucky just about fell over out of pure shock.  Steph almost _never_ put things so crudely, even though Bucky did—and frequently.

They hadn’t bothered to make the bed before leaving their apartment that morning, and Bucky kicked the tangle of threadbare sheets onto the floor to make room for them both. She settled in between Steph’s knees, hiking that new dress up as far as it would go, grateful that they couldn’t afford to buy stockings; they would have just gotten in the way of what she was about to do with Steph, who in turn was impatiently working on the buttons of Bucky’s sleeveless blouse (the Bermuda shorts she’d been wearing were the first to go).

Bucky batted Steph’s hand away and slipped the blouse over her head, now that enough buttons had been undone, tossing it onto the floor so she could start removing Steph’s panties using only her teeth—a fun little trick she’d picked up eavesdropping on the guys at work.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Steph asked, propping herself up on her skinny elbows to look down at Bucky, knitting her eyebrows together.

Bucky grinned up at Steph. “Taking off your undies, of course.”

Steph started laughing at her outright, once that sank in. “Jesus, is _that_ what you were doing? I thought you’d suddenly come down with rabies.”

“It was _supposed_ to be sexy.” Bucky scowled.

“You know what would be sexy?”

“What, Steph?”

“If you’d stop screwing around and just start fucking me,” Steph answered, sending Bucky into a paroxysm of laughter, during which she did actually manage to get Steph’s panties off—somehow, and it wasn’t easy because Steph was giggling too—tossing them onto the floor and not particularly caring about where they landed.

“Anything for my best girl,” Bucky said with a grin.

Off came the dress entirely, because it was already half-open anyway; Bucky hadn’t quite made it all the way into the bedroom before unzipping it just enough to get Steph’s bra off, because she couldn’t stand the thought of letting two layers of fabric get between her mouth and Steph’s tits for one second longer, and Steph would have killed her for sure if she’d gotten more of that lipstick on her dress.

Steph didn’t seem to mind that Bucky hung her dress up on the headboard crooked; that may have been because Bucky immediately distracted her with a judicious application of her tongue. Steph’s wiry fingers tangled themselves into Bucky’s hair, which was almost as short as any man’s but never particularly neat or tidy. Bucky gripped Steph’s hip with one hand while she used her other to work a few fingers in and out, careful not to squeeze too tightly or she’d leave a bruise on that delicate, peach-perfect skin. She loved the little gasps that came out of Steph’s mouth, how she occasionally tugged at Bucky’s hair, the way her own blonde waves looked spilling across the flattened threadbare pillow, although Bucky could never have put it into words.

Steph came so hard that she almost gave herself an asthma attack from breathing hard (she was trying not to make too much noise in case the neighbors heard), and then she almost gave herself another one from laughing again when Bucky pointed it out. Despite the nighttime humidity that settled over them like a wet wool blanket, even with all the windows propped open to catch a cross-breeze, they curled up together on the bed anyway.  Bucky threw her leg over both of Steph’s, breathing in the scent of her hair as she buried her face in the back of Steph’s neck.

“Have a good birthday?” she asked, once they’d both gotten more settled in.

Steph reached over for the hand Bucky was resting on her hip, twining their fingers together. “Perfect,” she said, pressing a warm kiss to Bucky’s palm.

——

The next morning after breakfast, the door to Bucky’s cell swings open, but when she looks up from the hem of her scrub top—she’s been unpicking the hem out of it steadily over the last few days, just to have something to do that isn’t journaling or talking or sleeping—Bucky realizes that it isn’t a guard sent to escort her to the usual doctor’s appointment.

“Bucky?” Steph asks, hovering in the doorway with her hands shoved into her pockets and worrying her already swollen bottom lip with her teeth. She’s not in her Captain America uniform, and she’s not in a SHIELD uniform, just a pair of plain khakis and a grey t-shirt, her hair pulled back in a short ponytail. “I know you said…well, you didn’t say it really, but.” Steph pauses for a moment, and her voice gets a little stronger for it. “I needed to see you anyway.”

She doesn’t answer. She _can’t_ answer, because that would only encourage Steph to stay. Bucky looks back down at the floor quickly, not wanting to meet her eyes.

“Bucky, please. Don’t—don’t do this to me. I’ve waited to see you for so long. Please don’t shut me out. I won’t come back again if you don’t want me to, but I just wanted to visit this one time.”

Bucky, as has always been her complete and utter failing in life, speaks before she thinks about it. “You shouldn’t be here.” Well. So much for the silent treatment, she guesses.

“I _had_ to.”

“Why? Needed to check something off a list?”

Steph flinches a little at that, but she stays where she is, even takes a further step inside the cell. “No, I—look, I don’t expect you to want to throw a ticker-tape parade or anything, but I thought we should talk, at least.”

“So talk.” Bucky goes back to unpicking her shirt hem, even though she wants nothing more than to jump up and fling herself at Steph. It’s not like they’re ever going to let her out of here, and it’s also not like she deserves to be released after the things she’s done, so why get Steph’s hopes up?

“I miss you,” Steph says simply. “I’ve missed you every single day since I let you fall. I’ve wanted to—I’ve thought about—“ She shakes her head, stuffing her hands in her pockets and slumping against the wall.

“Don’t be an idiot. You didn’t _let_ me fall,” Bucky says, against her will, but at least her mouth is betraying her for the truth. “I just…fell. Wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

Steph shakes her head again, her mouth compressed into a thin line that tells Bucky more about her struggle not to give in to tears than the glistening at the corners of her eyes ever could; it’s the same expression Bucky’s seen on her dozens of times after Steph had opened her mouth to try and right some wrong that had been done but probably shouldn’t have. “I could’ve reached further.”

“And I could’ve not been the dumb shit who couldn’t find something to grab onto in a whole fuckin’ train car before I fell out,” Bucky retorts.

Steph makes a noise that’s half laugh, half sob, taking one hand out of her pocket to swipe at her eyes. “You always did have a different take on things than most people,” she said, badly concealing a sniffle.

“Well, all I’m saying is—if you need absolution or whatever, go ahead and take it.” Bucky shrugs. “I sure as hell don’t blame you. That would just be stupid.”

“I guess I’m stupid, then,” Steph says.

“You’re a lot of things, Rogers, but stupid isn’t one of them. Don’t let me hear you talk like that again,” she says, surprising herself with how—well, how _normal_ she sounds. It’s like no time has passed at all, despite Bucky’s best efforts to keep it all compartmentalized, to keep herself from feeling anything other than shame and loathing.

Before Bucky can even register it, Steph’s already crossed the small gulf between them and is sitting down on Bucky’s cot next to her, the cheap metal frame sagging slightly under her weight. “I really missed you,” Steph says again, quietly, and she slides her arm around Bucky’s shoulders—but gingerly, as if afraid that Bucky will throw her off immediately.

Bucky doesn’t.

Steph pulls her in close.

 ——

“It’s me—it’s Steph,” said the hallucination who had just released Bucky from her restraints and was now helping Bucky sit up.

“Steph?” Bucky echoed, mostly trying to focus on keeping upright, which was none too easy with the room swimming all around her like that. She wasn’t really too successful. But, if this all this _was_ a hallucination of some kind, at least it was a nice one, with Steph in a body that didn’t look like it would betray her at any moment. “Steph, how—“

“I thought you were dead,” Steph said.

Bucky squinted at her, fuzzily. “I thought you were smaller.”

Steph laughed hoarsely, then slung her arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “C’mon, Buck, we gotta get out of here.”

Seeing as how the whole stinking place appeared to now be on fire (to which she had absolutely zero objection—it could burn to the ground with every HYDRA bastard in existence locked inside, as far as she was concerned), Bucky agreed.

Due to the number of men who were injured, and because none of them had been exactly given five-star hotel treatment, it took them almost three full days to get back to base camp even though it was only a short trek on paper. It would have taken longer had the 101st Airborne not been in the area and given them a lift, cramming as many men who could fit into the back of their transport convoys as possible. That suited Bucky fine, because it gave her a chance to talk to Steph before they’d have to face real authority, and also because the physical exertion of walking took her mind off what she’d just come from.

“Spit it out. What _happened_ to you?” Bucky asked Steph when they’d stopped to rest for the night, finally having made it back to the Allied front lines.

 “I joined the army,” Steph said, laughing when Bucky punched her in the arm and declared that answer insufficient.

It turned out that when she’d written to Bucky that she’d finally been cleared for service, what Steph _really_ meant was the job she’d managed to finagle at the local draft board had paid off when the doctor, a man named Erskine, noticed Steph’s ambition to serve and somehow managed to convince the Scientific Strategic Reserve to make her their next test subject for a special serum. Steph apologized to Bucky for lying and telling her she was coming overseas as a certified nurse, which Bucky waved off because it wasn’t like she’d exactly been honest with Steph either—the WACs had, in fact, wanted her until someone in charge had noticed her proficiency with languages and passed her application to the OSS; instead of going to basic training, Bucky had really been taking lessons in cryptography, etiquette, first aid, firearms, and even hand-to-hand combat. So she couldn’t be too sore with Steph for really learning how to jump out of planes and learning how to read maps instead of changing bandages and making tea. It was a better use of her skills, anyway.

“Hey, Steph?” Bucky asked.

“Hm?”

“How’d you know I was missing?”

“Your name came up listed with the 107th,” Steph explained. “It didn’t say you were missing so much as. Well. Dead, actually.”

“So you just went charging in to avenge me, huh?” Bucky couldn’t hide her smile, and she wouldn’t even if she wanted to—it felt so good to smile, for once; it seemed to her like forever since she’d had something to be happy about.

She could see Steph going slightly pink even in the dim light of the bonfire they’d started earlier. “Kind of. Yeah.”

“Well, you always were too dumb not to run away from a fight,” Bucky told her.

“You’re a real jerk, you know that?”

“Takes one to know one,” she said and leaned against Steph’s shoulder.

“Yeah, well. At least I’m not a punk like you. A _Stars and Stripes_ reporter? _Really_?”

Bucky laughed. “It was my cover story to get into Italy. I wasn’t with them but two weeks before we got ambushed.”

“Rotten luck.”

“Yeah, it was. Could’ve been worse, but. I’m glad that you came.”

——

“You are?” Steph looks as surprised as she sounds, and that’s when Bucky realizes she’s spoken out loud, after god knows how many minutes of just sitting there in silence together.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am,” she decides, and rests her head on Steph’s shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a line from Led Zeppelin's "The Battle of Evermore." It was almost another line from the same song--"the pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath"--but even I thought that was a bit much.


End file.
